Kukla's Korner Hockey

The way Jim Agnew sees it, life boils down to a single principle — teamwork.
Whether that entails patrolling Missoula’s streets as a sheriff’s deputy, charging down the ice as a defenseman for the Vancouver Canucks, or raising his family in Montana, the idea of functioning as a single unit has always appealed to the Canadian-born retired hockey player….
“The coach says ‘Jimmy, we’re going to start you out. But right off the hop, I want you to run Gretzky,’ ” Agnew recalls. “So I decide I’m really going to run Gretzky first shift, I’m going to hammer Gretzky, because I wanted to please the coach.
“A few seconds into the game and the puck’s behind the net, and there’s Gretzky. I’m tearing down the ice right at him, and he does one of these between-the-legs spin maneuvers and I go flying by like NASCAR,” he said. “It was less than a minute into the game and I was sitting down. The coach just leaned over to me and said, ‘Forget about what I told you.’”